


Good Intentions Make Questionable Paving Slabs

by Littlewinns



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Canon compliant up to 3x05, Gen, Spoilers for 3x05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 17:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12562736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Littlewinns/pseuds/Littlewinns
Summary: Short piece based on spoilers for 3x05, because I have no expectation that the show will actually do a scene like this.Somewhat of a companion piece to my previous fic, Credit Where Credit's Due, but not in continuity with it.





	Good Intentions Make Questionable Paving Slabs

**Author's Note:**

> I won't profess this to be my best work; the tone takes a sharp left turn at the end, and the title is atrocious - but it was only supposed to be a drabble, and it kind of got huge.
> 
> PS: Look, I only really have one ship, okay? And yes, it's a stupid, solo-kayak of a crack-ship, but I'm writing it anyway; and until such time as TPTB are gracious enough to bless me with a third scene between them, it's going to be a little repetitive in terms of subject.

Lena watched the live feed of the press conference from the middle of the newsroom. _Morgan Edge_ , she thought, watching his poorly-concealed smug grin as he stood just behind the young woman who was crying into the microphone; _Does he really think he can get away with this?_

As she watched, James anxiously hurried towards her.

"Ms. Luthor?" he interrupted, "There's someone in my office that needs to speak with you."

"Tell them they'll have to wait," she told him. These vile rumours Edge was propagating needed to be her priority, so she had no time for-

"He's from Homeland Security," James informed her; whispering, so no one else could hear.

She looked up at him, silently despairing that yet another law enforcement agency had deemed it necessary to put her on their suspects list.

"Thank you, Mr. Olsen," she said; before putting her police-questioning face on, and making her way toward James's office.

Kara strolled up to James, worried, as her eyes followed Lena towards her desk - Eve's desk, she corrected herself - and beyond; and then her worry turned to confusion as she saw who was waiting inside.

"Why is Winn posing as a federal agent?" she asked him.

James looked down at her, a little dumbfounded.

"He _is_ a federal agent," he said.

"Yeah, but he's not, like, a _real_ federal agent. I mean he is, but..." she trailed off, not really knowing where the sentence could go from there.

"Why is he here?" she finished, feebly.

"I don't know," James said, concerned, "but it's not to see either of us."

 

Lena entered James's office to find Winn, leaning casually against the desk; facing away from the screen wall, and looking out the window. He wore jacket and tie; with a dark purple shirt, and a sullen expression. If she didn't know him, she might have mistaken him for an adult.

But she did, and that let her relax a little. But only a little. Winn was DEO, an agency with which she had a... unusual relationship, and with this agent, even more so; but if he was posing as Homeland Security, he probably wasn't here for a chat.

She heard Eve step into the office behind her.

"Can I get you anything, Ms. Luthor?" she asked, furtively.

Lena turned to answer; but before she could, she was interrupted by Winn's voice from the desk.

"No, thank you, Miss Teschmacher."

Lena turned to him, astounded at the interruption. Winn was still looking out the window.

"Please close the door behind you, Miss Teschmacher," he said, breaking away from the window to speak to Eve directly. He still hadn't even glanced in Lena's direction.

Lena turned back to Eve, who was staring at him - not unnerved, as her assistants often were when the Men In Suits came calling; but frightened, as though a friend has just revealed a terrible secret.

"Thank you, Eve; that will be all," Lena said, trying to give the girl a sense of normalcy. Eve turned back to Lena briefly, nodded to acknowledge the instruction, and then closed the door behind her; giving the agent one last look before sitting down at her desk.

Lena steeled herself before she spoke.

"Homeland Security?" she said, turning back to him, adopting the tone she'd last heard a few years before when a sommelier had offered her mother a rosé with the fish course, "How very-"

"Did we poison some kids?" Winn asked her calmly, looking her dead in the eye.

Lena had stepped forward to make use of one of the couches, but thought better of it. She hadn't expected him to be so direct. 

"I don't know if you've heard, what with working at a media empire and all; but the big wall of screens behind me is saying the device we built to end the Daxamite invasion poisoned some kids. Did we poison some kids?" he said, in a single, even, well-considered stream, not breaking eye-contact with her for a moment; each thought slotted precisely into place, like bullets in a magazine.

Winn had never spoken to her this way. _No one_ had ever spoken to her this way, and certainly not the Men in Suits. The Men in Suits - and in her memory, they were always men, not matter how many women there had actually been - had always been full of bluster and bravado; desperate to emphasise how much power the law gave them, while making it embarrassingly clear that they knew exactly how _irrelevant_ the law could be to people like her.

But Winn was not one of the Men in Suits, and he was not putting on _that_ show, whatever James Olsen and Eve Teschmacher might have believed. The clever, affable, nervous boy she had become acquainted with was not here to make a name for himself. 

He was not here to seek justice, or see her get what she deserved. 

He was not here to ask her to incriminate herself.

"I mean, I wasn't particularly wild about the idea of murdering my friend, but I went along with it, mainly because he'd actually volunteered to get murdered, and there was a slim chance that he might not actually die; but if I'd known that we'd be poisoning some kids as well, I would have motioned to reconsider our strategy, so I'll ask again: did we poison some kids?"

He was here to ask if he'd destroyed his own soul.

He couldn't emphasise his power. He didn't have any.

But her fate was tied to his in this, so if he was going to Hell for what he'd done... then so was she.

Which meant she didn't have any power either. And he knew it. 

And that made him dangerous.

She walked toward him, considering her answer carefully.

"Winn, I can assure you-" she began, but he cut her off before she could dissemble any further.

"You can, but you haven't yet," he said, getting up off the desk, and stepping forwards toward her, "And I had assurances before. Admittedly, I had them from a psychopath with incredible cheekbone game, but I had them. Now I need _answers_."

Winn hadn't raised his voice. He still hadn't broken eye contact. But he wasn't trying to stare her down. There was determination in those eyes, certainly; but also kindness, and tremendous, near-infinite patience.

_Take as long as you need,_ those eyes told her, _I can wait forever._

_But you **will** answer me._

Nothing at the Luthor family breakfast table had ever prepared her for this; and that made a part of her as frightened as Eve had been. 

And it was poised to fight back.

"So please, for the fourth time, yes or no: did we poison some kids?"

"No," she said, with all the calm arrogance she could muster.

"No?" he asked; and the fact that he doubted her only infuriated her further.

"No."

"Are you sure? You didn't make one of your funny miscalcuations?" Winn said.

"Luthors don't make mistakes," she said, with near-emotionless spite; painfully aware that, in reality, they did, and that she was making one right now.

"If Luthors didn't make mistakes, California would be an irradiated hellscape; and you and I would never have met under a bandstand," he replied, with the unspoken caveat of _And we wouldn't have needed to build the thing in the first place._

"Or had you thought I'd forgotten?"

Lena hadn't thought Winn had forgotten the night of the charity gala. She knew that he hadn't. But she had never before considered it to be one of her mistakes.

"It was an incredible plan. I would never have thought of it; and if I had, no-one would have ever authorised it. Using innocent people as bait? It would have put too many innocent lives in danger. And it did.

"And that was entirely on your own time-table, Ms. Luthor. No-one forced you to spring a trap; and certainly no-one forced you to spring a trap that didn't work. As much good as you did, the only person to truly screw up that night was _you._ "

He hadn't emphasised the word, not really. But she heard it inside her head, all the same.

"The only reason there weren't more casualties that night was because you showed enough humility to make sure Supergirl was involved. Do us both a favour, and consider exercising that same humility now."

She silently prayed for the real Men in Suits to burst in and take over the investigation; for the chance to have this conversation with _anyone_ who might let her talk around the subject as her mother, or her brother, or even her father might have done.

But no-one came.

"This is Morgan Edge," she told Winn, defiantly.

"Is it?" he asked. Lena honestly couldn't tell if he was being skeptical or sincere.

"He's been working to undermine me ever since I bought Catco out from under him," she explained, walking past him, stepping around James's desk to face the screen wall; as the young woman she'd been watching earlier was about to step down from the podium. She hit two buttons on the desk controls, and the woman's face ended up on the huge center screen, frozen in place.

"I mean, who is this woman? Young, pretty, can cry on cue; she's like a publicist's wet dream. What have you found out about her?" she asked, not at all proud of how easily the Luthor cynicism came to her when she needed it.

"Not much; she's not the focus of our investigation," Winn replied.

"So, there's a chance that she's a paid crisis actor?"

"No," he said, far too quickly for her not to notice.

"No?" she said, throwing his previous doubt of her right back at him, "Have you considered exercising some humility?"

"She works at a group home for foster kids-" he began, ignoring her comment.

"An orphanage? Seriously? If I keep running the footage, is little Annie going to come out and do the song?" she interrupted, disparagingly. She was worried she was going too far, but the point needed to be made.

"Not an orphanage, a foster home. She used to be a resident when she was a kid, now she helps supervise the others," Winn explained.

"Doesn't mean she's not being paid off. I'll have one of my reporters look into her background, find out what problems she has that Edge could exploit. I mean, growing up in the system, in that kind of home? Can you imagine what that does to a person?"

And suddenly, Lena was struck by the strangest memory. She'd been eight or nine, and she and Lex were playing Risk - no, they weren't playing Risk; she'd only played Risk twice, and she'd hated it both times, but it was some kind of board game - and she had made... a tactical error. Lex, who must have been sixteen or seventeen then, had smiled at her the way an older brother does when he's about to make his little sister suffer; and said, with far more kindness than he would ever be given credit for now, "You just invaded Russia, doofus."

She couldn't imagine what had made her think of that.

"I don't have to," she heard Winn say from behind her, his voice as cold as a five-month long siege of Stalingrad between August and February.

"Winn, I-" she tried, as she turned back to him. But she would have no idea what she would say, and even less once she saw his face.

From the moment she'd walked in, there had been kindness in his eyes. A sense of empathy. A sense that, that no matter what her final answer ended up being, they were in this together; and nothing she could say would change that, even if she felt she couldn't risk telling him the truth.

"I used to live there. At the same time as her, in fact," he said, calmly.

And now that she'd crossed the line, that she'd said some truly terrible things... there was even more. Just a bottomless pit of forgiveness, right there, if only she'd take a few steps toward it. There was anger and sadness, too, to be sure; but mainly, there was a compassionate plea: _Please. You are better than this._

Winn broke his gaze from her at last, and looked up at the screen. "Her name's Sarah. She likes Fleetwood Mac, or at least, she used to. I was one of the oldest kids, when I lived there, so there was this one time, I had to take her shopping, the first time she... well, I probably shouldn't tell you the things I took her shopping for.

"Anyway, once I'm done here, me and my boss are going to go speak to her, and ask her exactly how many of the kids there are sick; and when I do, I would prefer it if I didn't have to lie, and pretend I didn't know whose fault it was.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm gonna do it if I have to. But they've been crapped on enough, all of them. They deserve better. Better from me, and certainly better from the girl who actually got taken in by Daddy Warbucks."

"I'm sorry, Daddy who?" Lena asked. She hadn't wanted to interrupt him when he was right, but the unusual name had thrown her. Winn looked at her like she suddenly didn't know how to use a soldering iron.

"Daddy Warbucks? Kindly billionaire, adopts orphan Annie? Basically a foster kid wish-fulfillment narrative?" he said. It seemed like he was trying to make a point, but Lena couldn't quite piece it together.

"You're orphan Annie in this metaphor," he spat out, tired and frustrated, but not enraged.

"Oh," was all the response that Lena could muster. Of course, the Luthors had adopted her more out of the guilt of her father's loins than the kindness of his heart, but she wasn't about to tell Winn that. "I've never actually seen it."

"Well, I'm gonna make sure next time you're at a karaoke bar, 'The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow' will be coming on as soon as you get up on stage, regardless of what song you actually picked, so if I were you, I might do some studying," he joked, and Lena couldn't help but meet it with silence.

"It's the song," he added, helpfully.

"Winn, how often do you think I go to karaoke bars?" she asked.

"Do. Not. Test. Me." Winn informed her, as he walked around the desk to stand beside her. She couldn't help but smile, just a little. And then he changed gears again.

"Lena, did we poison these kids?" Winn asked again; quietly, as she was distracted. Whatever magic he'd been working when she'd walked in was gone now; and only familiar, funny Winn remained. But as she looked into his eyes, she found she couldn't fight the question anymore.

"I... don't know."

"You don't know?" he asked, as patiently as he could.

"No." She'd rushed the device, she knew. There was nothing in the design that suggested it could do the things the news was saying. 

But she wasn't sure, and saying it aloud didn't make it any better.

"Good. See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" 

In her head, she'd wanted him to be condescending. It would have been better if he'd been condescending. But there was nothing but sincerity in his voice; and his face was plastered with the open, insecure smile she'd come to know and... know.

"So, what are our next steps?" he asked her.

"Doesn't 'Homeland Security' have a plan?" she asked in kind.

"I trust your gift for strategy. Mine is non-existent." he replied, briefly placing his hand on her shoulder.

"I wouldn't be so sure," she said, based on what she'd witnessed in the past ten minutes, "I'm having the schematics e-mailed to me, so I can go over them-"

"There were schematics?" he asked.

"Not when we were building it, but afterwards I had the device taken apart, and had our design team draw them- what?"

Winn's smile had somehow gotten even wider.

"You are such a dork," he said, teasingly.

"I... document responsibly," she said, defensively; "Are you telling me you don't?"

"No, of course I do; but my dorkitude is essentially public knowledge. I'm not trying to keep it on the down-low."

She hesitated, and then said, "I have a reputation to maintain."

"Of course," he concurred, although not as seriously. "Send them to me, too; let's see if we reach the same conclusions," and he placed a fake DHS calling card down on the desk; before stepping away, and making his way back toward the door..

"Winn?" she called out, "I still think Edge is involved with this somehow."

Winn turned back to her, and nodded, "That's what I think too. If nothing else, the two people nearest to that thing when it went off were us; and we're not sick, so...

"But I needed to know what you'd say," he said, apologetically, "We'll sort this out, don't worry."

He turned back, and managed to put his hand on the door handle before she spoke again.

"Winn?"

"Yeah?" he asked.

"I'm sorry. About what I said."

"Well, you're forgiven," he said, as he swung open the door, "But I'd still consider learning the song."

He stepped through the door, drawing Eve's attention by saying "Miss Teschmacher!" in a loud and sunny voice, then closed the door behind him as he spoke to the distraught girl at the desk for thirty seconds; Lena watching from James's office as Eve's face turned from distrust, to understanding, to the big, beaming smile she'd been introduced to on her first day.

And then, three hours later, Lena noticed a large, happy bunch of flowers on Eve's desk.

And then, Lena forgot all about it. She and Winn both reached the conclusion that the device was not at fault; but they hadn't been able to pin the sickness on Edge either, so she'd pledged to help these children in any way that she could - because, really, what else could she do?

And then, life had gone on.

...until maybe a month or two later, and she and Kara and Sam and James were out for after work drinks, that had turned into after dinner drinks; and she'd had a number of espresso martinis - not real martinis, more was the pity, but they had a certain quality - and she had spent twenty minutes looking through the book for a Top 40 song from her teens that wouldn't make her look silly; and then she got up on stage, and a Broadway overture unexpectedly boomed out of the PA...

...and she could have sworn, in the murk at the back of the bar, she saw a familiar face with ruffley hair, looking like a cat that had not just eaten the canary, but an entire aviary; and giving her a big, obnoxious, double thumbs-up.

She really wished she'd learned the damn song.


End file.
